Citi taps former Wells Fargo exec as Chicago president

Citibank N.A. has named a former Wells Fargo & Co. executive as its new Chicago-market president.

Mindy Mercaldo, who ran retail banking in Atlanta for Wells Fargo until moving to Chicago 15 months ago to handle the same role for Citibank here, will add the title of Chicago president at the New York-based banking giant.

Jerome Byers, who is Midwest region head at Citibank and also runs small-business banking in North America, worked with Ms. Mercaldo in Atlanta when the two were at Wells Fargo.

In an interview Monday alongside Mr. Byers, Ms. Mercaldo said her experience in Atlanta, which like Chicago has a crowded banking field, prepared her for the nation's third-largest market.

“It's competitive (in Chicago), but I think there's a lot of space here,” she said.

A Philadelphia native, Ms. Mercaldo has 24 years' experience in retail banking. She serves on the boards of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and LINK Unlimited, a mentoring organization for disadvantaged African-American youth.

In the year ended June 30, Citi boosted its Chicago-area deposits by 12 percent, to $10.5 billion. But, given that marketwide deposits increased 8 percent as businesses and consumers hoarded cash, the bank still slipped one notch from the previous year in local market share, to No. 8.

Mr. Byers said Citi wants to be in the top five in Chicago, which is a market the global bank has targeted for growth.

To that end, the bank has hired aggressively in the past year, adding about 500 employees and bringing its local workforce to about 2,500. The hires included branch bankers, mortgage loan officers, credit card service workers, commercial lenders and wealth managers.

Citi is pulling back, though, on the substantial branch-building plans it unveiled a year ago for Chicago. At that time, it said it expected to add at least 20 locations over time to the 71 it has now after the recent opening of its newest branch at 180 N. Michigan Ave. Michael Corbat, CEO of bank parent Citigroup Inc., who assumed the top job last fall, has put a greater emphasis on cost control.

“We may add a few more, but we're not going to open a lot of branches,” Mr. Byers said.

In fact, Citi closed three under-performing branches at the end of last year. The three were in southwest suburban Oswego and Shorewood, and in Lakeview on North Clark Street.

Citi does still plan to build a downtown “flagship” branch sometime after this year, he said. The bank has built such branches, similar to the branding monuments Apple Inc. and others have built in major retail stretches like North Michigan Avenue, in New York and Washington.

(Editor's note: Ms. Mercaldo will lead the Chicago market, not Illinois. This fact and her title have been corrected in this updated story. Also, the bank's current number of branches has been corrected, to 71.)